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Chapter 6: Life Is an Opportunity

One who has attained oneness with Brahman, the absolute reality, while living, will remain so even after leaving the body. Therefore, O innocent one! becoming awakened be void of all choice in duality.When one sees the nondual soul through nirvikalpa samadhi - the choiceless awakening - that is the moment when the knot of ignorance in the heart dissolves completely.Consolidating the self-ness, dropping the I-ness etcetera, exist with indifference to them, like with pots and clothes, etcetera.All titles - from Brahman, the creator god, to a stone - are false. Therefore, rooted only in the soul, see your own soul everywhere.I myself am Brahman - the creator; I myself am Vishnu - the sustainer; I myself am Shiva - the destroyer; I myself am Indra - the chief of all gods; I myself am this universe, and I myself am all. There is nothing other than myself.

Whatsoever is worth achieving in life can be achieved only during the lifetime. But many people go on waiting until after death. Many people think that how can truth, the divine, liberation be achieved while still being in the body, in life, in the world? However, what cannot be attained during life cannot be attained ever.

Life is an opportunity to achieve, whether you spend it in collecting pebbles or in attaining to the divine. Life is a completely neutral opportunity. Life does not tell you what to achieve. If you collect pebbles, accumulate worthless things, or waste your life in increasing and inflating your ego, life will not prevent you from doing so. Or you may dedicate your life to attaining the truth, the self and the ultimate depths of life; then too life will not object to your doing so.

Life is merely a neutral opportunity - you may use it the way you like. But many people have made arrangements to deceive themselves. They think, “Life is for worldly pleasures.” They have created such divisions: “Life is for bhoga, indulgence.” But then only death remains for yoga, union with the divine. But death is not an opportunity. Let this be understood properly. Death is an end of all opportunity.

What is the meaning of death? Its meaning is that now there is no more opportunity left. Life is an opportunity, death is the end of the opportunity. So nothing can be achieved through death, because for achieving anything there should be a span of opportunity.

But we have divided: we say life is for indulgence. But when life will be exhausted, then?.then yoga. We have created all these stories that you utter into the ears of the dying person at the time of death - when he will not even be able to hear. When living persons do not listen, how would a dead or dying person hear a gayatri mantra, or recite the name of the divine, or chant “Rama, Rama”?

The person could not hear the gayatri mantra his whole life, and even if he heard he did not listen, and even if he listened he did not grasp.. That person at the time of death - when all the senses will be failing; when the eyes won’t see, the ears won’t hear, the hands won’t touch; when life is disappearing back into its source - will he be able to hear gayatri? No, he will not be able to hear. But then why do people go on uttering such things into his ears? There is a secret in it. That dying person is unable to hear anything, but the living ones who are uttering it for him remain under the assurance that at the time of their death somebody will utter it for them, and the goal will be achieved. So they have invented stories of this sort.